Hacks

Umbrella buckyball bar

Umbrella buckyball bar

Dutch architecture firms Unsolicited Studio and DUS Architects threw a Rotterdam street party under an artfully designed geodesic-esque dome constructed from orange umbrellas, using a lamp post as the central support. The party lasted until 2am when the police broke it up. For another umbrella dome, check out Kengo Kuma’s house made with umbrellas zipped […]

How-To:  Make high-voltage sparks using a spark-plug

How-To: Make high-voltage sparks using a spark-plug

We went to the hardware store and came home with lots of PVC bits that we assembled into a barrel and a chamber. Then we waffled for some time about how to hack together an electric ignition system. Our thoughts went immediately to using an automotive spark-plug, but none of us really understood enough about electricity to know how to separate the spark-plug from the car. We were pretty sure you couldn’t just take a spark-plug and wire it up to a car battery and expect results, but beyond that we were clueless. We ended up using a piezoelectric barbecue grill igniter, which gave satisfactory results but often required several “clicks” to actually fire the thing.